Outdoor lighting fixtures present designers with a variety of challenges. Not only do these lighting fixtures have to withstand extreme environmental conditions, such as excessive winds and extreme humidity and temperature swings, but they also need to be lightweight, easy to install without being damaged, and economical to produce. Decreasing the weight of the lighting fixtures makes installation easier and safer for the installer. A single installer can safely handle a large highway-size fixture, where it traditionally took two people to install each fixture. Decreasing the fixture weight can also allow the lighting fixtures to be mounted onto less-expensive and/or taller poles.
In an effort to reduce weight as well as manufacturing costs, lighting fixtures are transitioning from employing metal housings to housings made from lighter weight composites, such as bulk molding compounds and the like. When employing composite materials, care must be taken to make sure that the lighting fixtures can withstand abuses associated with installation. For the latter, a lighting fixtures is often attached to a tenon of a pole using a metal clamping mechanism, which generally requires the tightening of bolts to attach to lighting fixtures to the tenon. Since the clamping mechanism must be attached to the composite housing of the lighting fixture, over-tightening of these bolts, which is commonplace during installation, may break, fracture, crack, or otherwise damage various portions of the composite housing. Accordingly, there is a continuing need to develop lightweight, composite housings for outdoor lighting fixtures that are able to withstand environmental forces and installation abuses.